Jenna Bush Hager revealed that one of her previous boyfriends broke up with her after seeing her “in a bathing suit”.
The 41-year-old spoke about the incident during Wednesday’s episode of Today with Hoda and Jenna. She and co-host Hoda Kotb were chatting about how Ariana Grande recently responded to fans’ comments about her body. After the pair pointed out how celebrities face a lot of public scrutiny, Bush Hager mentioned her childhood boyfriend who made a comment about her body that “hit her where it hurt”.
“I had a boyfriend in seventh grade who broke up with me after we went swimming together,” she said. “After he saw me in a bathing suit.”
She noted how that experience still impacts her feelings about her body after giving birth to three children, Mila, 10, Poppy, seven, and Hal three, whom she shares with husband Henry Chase Hager.
“Even sometimes now when I feel great, I have three kids, three C-sections, I feel really in my body and I think of it as a beautiful thing, I’ll walk in a pool and have a moment,” she added.
As the TV hosts reflected on the rude comments they’ve received about their looks, Bush Hager also noted how these experiences have shaped the way in which she raises her children.
“All we want is loving children. We don’t need the star kid, the this, the that. We want kids that are kind. So that way you do that is you model it,” she said.
The pair’s conversation came after Grande responded to fans’ concerns about her looks and told them “there are many different ways to look healthy and beautiful”. She also urged her followers to be “gentle with each other and” themselves.
“I think we could be, I think we should be, gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies, no matter what,” the “Side to Side” singer said. “If you think you’re saying something good or well-intentioned, whatever it is — healthy, unhealthy, big, small, this, that, sexy, not sexy — we just shouldn’t.”
Along with her recent comments on Today, Bush Hager has previously spoken out about the body image issues she’s experienced. During an episode of Today with Hoda and Jenna in January, she opened up about her childhood and revealed a comment that her grandmother made which influenced her perception about her body.
“I remember being a teenager,” the journalist said. “I remember the bikini colour that I was wearing, a yellow bikini colour. I was laying next to my sister and my grandmother, who I adored but had kind of a biting personality, said something like, ‘Oh Jenna, looking chubby.’”
Although Bush Hager said that the comment made her “feel like [she] wanted to hide” in her body, she noted that she later understood where her grandmother’s remarks had come from.
“She later told me that her mother said those types of things to her,” Bush Hager explained. “Her mother always thought of her sister as the really beautiful one and would say, ‘Martha’s the pretty one, you’re the funny one. You’re the smart one, Martha is this one. You’re that one.’”
